The Mulayam Singh and Akhilesh Yadav factions of the Samajwadi Party met senior officials of the Election Commission here on Monday to stake their claim for the party’s ‘cycle’ symbol in the elections.
Uttar Pradesh will see a seven-phase election process with the maximum number of Assembly constituencies (73 of the total 403) going to the polls on February 11. The votes for all 403 constituencies will be counted on March 11.
Mulayam is believed to have submitted that he was still SP chief and has legal claim over the party and its symbol. He also told the Commission that the convention called by Akhilesh Yadav camp on January 1 was “unconstitutional” as Ramgopal Yadav, who had convened the meet, was expelled from the party on December 30, 2016. Mulayam also contested the affidavits of party leaders submitted by the party faction owing allegiance to his son, alleging that they were forged, and asked the EC to get them verified.
He also said that while there was a resolution appointing Akhilesh as party president and another one appointing him as its mentor, there was no resolution removing him from the party chief’s post.
Talking to reporters after meeting EC officials, Mulayam denied that there was a ‘ vivad ’(fight/controversy) between him and his son. He added that it was now up to the Commission to decide on what should happen to the ‘cycle’.
Meanwhile, the Akhilesh faction urged the Commission to ‘expedite’ the award of the the cycle symbol to either of the two factions as the first phase of Assembly elections would be notified on January 17. The faction met EC officials soon after Mulayam had left the Commission.
The Samajwadi Party has seen a virtual split with Akhilesh Yadav, the current Chief Minister, being named party President in place of Mulayam at the January 1 emergency convention held in Lucknow.
Both the sides have submitted several boxes of evidence to support their claims over the ‘cycle’ symbol. Based on the evidence submitted, the Commission will have to take a decision on awarding the symbol or freezing it and asking both factions to choose from a list of 75 free symbols.
At the moment, Election Commission officials are refusing to speculate on a time-frame by which a final decision will be arrived at.